Have you ever questioned what’s looking through your eyes or what exactly is appearing? I’m not referring to your name, age, or address as these are descriptors about you. I’m asking if you have explored the nature of what you are. I’ve come to realize that the brain and mind create stories about what is appearing and put us at the center of these stories. I now realize we’ve all been programmed since babyhood to …
“If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all abandon all self-identification, stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such or so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual, abandon …
We’re conditioned to perceive life/reality as unfolding inside or outside a person/body. This caged way of perceiving life is held by the vast majority of humans and is the root of all emotional and psychological suffering. It’s been said by many folks, many times…with our thoughts we create our world. This is how the brain/mind works…conceptualizing, rationalizing, and objectifying what is perceived…and this is how we are programmed and trapped in the mind’s naming, claiming, and labeling …
I came across this little gem from David Bohm, (December 20, 1917–October 27, 1992), an American physicist and scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century. Below are Bohm’s words from a 1977 Berkeley lecture in which Bohm offered a poetic formulation of the interplay between our beliefs and what we experience as reality: Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to …
Nondual philosophy slowly migrated to the United States as the foundational teachings of many ancient Eastern spiritual practices for perceiving and experiencing a peaceful life. This fundamental foundation includes the teachings of Zen, Tao, Vedanta, and Sufism, along with the mystical Christian teachings of Jesus the Christ, St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, St. Teresa of Avila, as well as the Perennial Wisdom literature and teachings. These ancient philosophies of “not two” point towards …
Excerpts from Perfect Brilliant Stillness: “The message of the sutras and the shamans is the same: the person of understanding is the one who dies before she dies, who leaves no footprints, who travels no path, because she knows that as a person, as an entity, she is not. But who can do this, what self can cease to be? None, as Wei Wu Wei would say, because none is: it can only happen. …
This life appears so real and tangible when we believe “we” are a subject, a separate self, observing or seeing what is appearing as “other” or objects. There is no separation between “what is seeing” and “what is appearing to be seen” unless you are claiming and living as an imaginary personal or separate self. You’ve never been separate, distinct, and tangible. Notice the brain/mind rise up and strongly protest these words. Of course, this …
